NASCAR UFO, Slenderman Follower Released, Cigarette Smoking Man Returns, Bigfoot in the Driveway and More Mysterious News Briefly

A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange news stories from the past week. 

While some people would appreciate the return of stolen goods, especially if they are still In good condition, the Iatmul people who live along the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea have refused to accept the return of ornamental human skulls taken from them by Catholic missionaries who hoped it would dissuade the culture from participating in ritual headhunting and cannibalism; the skulls were kept at the Missiemuseum in the village of Steyl in The Netherlands whose curator, Paul Voogt, took the skulls back to Papua New Guinea to right the wrong but instead found that the Iatmul people refused them because “They think it was too long ago, no longer know who they were and they have made a large number of new skulls in the meantime. Moreover, they could be the skulls of enemies and people believe that could bring bad luck”. How did he explain this to the airport security agents who were checking his bag on the trip home?

If you see two young children walking in a schoolyard at 3 in the morning, your first thought would be one of concern for their safety, and that’s what two police officers in Jala, Nayarit, Mexico, felt when they saw exactly that; their night vision video showed what looks like two children playing inside a locked gate when they saw the officers and appeared to scream and run away; no explanation by the officers was reported in the local media and comments on the Tik Tok video run from ghosts to hoax and various speculations in between. It sounds like it’s time for a parent-teacher-paranormal-investigator conference.

Randy Anderson, a former Green Beret, became a UFO whistleblower on a recent podcast when he revealed that in 2014 he visited a secret underground facility at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane in Indiana where he claims to have seen what he called “Off World Technology”, including a metallic basketball-sized sphere levitating above a pedestal and a deadly “bracelet” that emitted holographic texts resembling hieroglyphs and allegedly killed one of the people who recovered it; Anderson also claimed that while working at Area 51 he saw a triangular craft with anti-gravity technology flying over the base; he admitted he kept what he saw secret but became emboldened by the testimonies of other whistleblowers like David Grusch, who has testified about his UFO knowledge to Congress; Anderson had no evidence supporting his experiences and fears his memories may have been altered because “It gets real fuzzy like almost something was purposely done to make it that way”. How many whistleblowers does it take to screw in a bulb that will finally make the government see the light of disclosure?

There has only been one confirmed death by meteorite (in 1888 in Iraq) and now there is one confirmed cracked windshield by meteorite after Paul Butler of Stratford-upon-Avon heard a loud noise in his yard on Boxing Day 2025 and found his car windshield mysteriously shattered; his son Nathan found a shiny black rock near the car that he tested and saw that it was magnetized, leading him to believe it was a meteorite; as of this writing, the rock has not been inspected by geologists or space scientists to confirm its origin. Is this covered by ‘collision’ insurance?

An unusual property casualty of the recent California wildfires is what is described as the world’s largest archive of Theosophical materials which was stored in Altadena near Pasadena and belonged to the Theosophical Society, an esoteric religious movement founded in 1875 which among other things investigates the “unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man”; the collection included a library with 40.000 titles, about 10.000 unpublished letters, some of which pertained to the society’s belief that humanity's evolution on earth and beyond is overseen by a hidden spiritual hierarchy called Masters of the Ancient Wisdom made up of advanced spiritual beings; prominent people associated with the Theosophical Society have included Thomas Edison, William Butler Yeats, and Italian alchemist Giustiniano Lebano, the so-called "Wizard of Torre Annunziata". We rightly focus on the human lives lost, but the loss of knowledge and historical documents affects our humanity as well.

The Baltic Sea anomaly sits on the northern bottom of that body of murky water looking on sonar-like Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon, leading many to believe it is a sunken UFO and inspiring Dennis Åberg of OceanX to send an ROV with a camera in 2022 to get better pictures which still aren’t clear enough for a positive identification but showed something that resembles engravings, so Åberg is now raising money via PayPal donations to mount another expedition because he thinks "the Baltic Sea anomaly remains one of the most enigmatic underwater discoveries and has significant potential to reveal a geological phenomenon or a deep historical or extraterrestrial mystery"; most scientists say it’s a natural geological formation. George Lucas should hope it’s a Millennium Falcon so he can sue for intellectual property theft.

Cricket may not be the most popular sport in the world, but it seems to rank high with orbs as the owner of the Clevedon Cricket Club’s clubhouse in Somerset, England, saw when he checked overnight security camera footage from the clubhouse bar and noticed an "orb-like figure" floating in front of the bar and another floating behind the bar; because the orbs were visible for at least 20 minutes, insects have been ruled out but ghosts and lights from outside are still in play. Someone should hang a bat from the ceiling to see if the orbs avoid it.

Paleoartist John Gurche used a plastic replica of the Harbin skull, a nearly complete 150,000-year-old human skull discovered in China in 1933 and believed to be from the ancient human species Homo longi (which some scientists think is actually the Denisovans), to reconstruct the head of its owner, showing facial features of an unknown human ancestor that may have lived in China from 150,000 to 20,000 years ago and may provide a link to the mysterious Denisovans; Gurche used comparative anatomy to create the eyes, and teeth to determine the location of chewing muscles to reconstruct the jaw and lower face; the end result is the closest image we have of H. longi or a Denisovan without having their DNA. If it looks like your Uncle Harry, they may want to talk to you.

If you are in the market for a haunted area known for ghost sightings and the host of paranormal investigations, the historical Eden Camp Museum in  Malton in North Yorkshire, England, is up for sale; originally a World War II POW camp, the 33 huts were later used for storage, abandoned and then resurrected as a museum housing human torpedoes, a "Sleeping Beauty" motorized submersible canoe. A fully restored Super Sherman tank, other military artifacts – and ghosts; paranormal investigators claim to have seen a bicycle moving on its own, heard unexplained knocking sounds, and communicated with a spirit using EMF meters; paranormal events already scheduled will continue despite the sale and it is hoped the new owners will keep the facility as a haunted military museum. Would a profitable haunted POW camp be listed on the Misfortune 500?

Frozen woolly mammoths get all of the attention when it comes to de-extincting animals using carcasses found frozen in the melting Siberian permafrost, but newly resurrected mammoths might not like the news that their other sworn enemy (besides humans and climate change) may be brought back too as paleontologists announced the discovery of the world’s first frozen saber-toothed cat mummy, a baby Homotherium latidens from 32,000 years ago; the scimitar-toothed cub, named for its short serrated canine teeth, has an unexpected dark brown coat with no spots or stripes common on big cat cubs; also, the paw pads for each toe are much rounder than those of modern lions and the cub lacks a distinctive carpal pad that is found higher up on the leg of modern cats. All of a sudden, the movies about a prehistoric park in Siberia just got more interesting and a little bloodier.

William T. ‘Bill’ Helms is an investigator for the Catskill Area Society for Paranormal Education and Research (CASPER) in New York but all he was doing was walking on his snow-covered driveway after work when he made an unusual paranormal discovery – among the human boot prints were two giant prints measuring 21 inches in length that looked more like those of a Bigfoot; based on the distance between the prints, he estimated it had a gait of 34 inches but he could find no other footprints or evidence of what made them; while some comments on the CASPER Facebook page speculated it was a bear, the Catskills are well known for Bigfoot sightings and Helms is an investigator who wouldn’t be fooled, so he’s looking for help in identifying it or finding more evidence. In the meantime, lock up the pets and kids.

The search for the identity of Jack the Ripper has been the coldest of cold cases, lasting more than 130 years, but it has heated up recently with the involvement of Karen Miller, the three-times great-granddaughter of the serial killer’s fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes; Miller is calling for and supporting a new inquest to establish that her killer was popular Ripper suspect Aaron Kosminski after investigator Russell Edwards determined that a bloodstained shawl allegedly found on Eddowes’ body had the DNA of both the victim and Kosminski and found evidence of a possible coverup involving the Freemasons; Edwards believes a new inquest would prove Kosminski’s guilt and Miller hopes this “would be a form of justice for the victims" and "It would mean a lot to me, to my family, to a lot of people to finally have this crime solved"; the inquest is also supported by Sue Parlour, whose husband is distantly related to both victim Mary Ann Nichols and Amanda Poulos, the three-times great-niece of Kosminski. An inquest could also serve as the world’s strangest family reunion.

Nearly 11 years after the general public first heard about Slenderman, Morgan Geyser, the 12-year-old girl who with a friend lured a classmate to a park and stabbed her 19 times, blaming her actions on the directions of the fictional Slenderman, has been granted conditional release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute where she has been held since pleading guilty in 2018 to attempted first-degree intentional homicide of Payton Leutner, who was in very serious condition but survived the attack; medical experts testified that Geyser has made considerable progress, doesn't pose a safety risk, doesn’t need medication and no longer believes in Slenderman (or Slender Man), the tall, thin creepypasta Internet meme with no face who inspired many rumors of attacks and scores of anxious parents. He may be fictional, but Slender Man is a real symbol of the power of suggestion.

Cassandra Martin, a flight attendant for Surjet, a private air service, recorded and shared with the media a video of a UFO she and two pilots saw over the Bahamas in late December after being notified of a ‘foreign object’ by Miami air traffic control; she and the pilots saw the green object and say it stayed with them for 45 minutes at 45,000 feet, far too high for the object to be a drone; Martin said the object zigzagged and changed color, but none of the three have any idea what it might have been, and there were no other people onboard the plane; while Martin only saw one, the pilots claimed they saw two other objects that night. Pilots, a flight attendant, a video and an air traffic control report – why was this not considered enough evidence to investigate at the time it occurred? Is it time for a real Space Force that can mobilize quickly, investigate and intercept?

The mysterious condition known as “Havana Syndrome”, which was first reported in 2016 by U.S. Embassy personnel in Cuba who could not explain their dizziness and nausea, was investigated by the CIA and other intelligence agencies as it spread to an estimated 1,500 American diplomats and  intelligence and military personnel at other government facilities and was eventually deemed to be caused by pre-existing conditions, conventional illnesses and environmental factors; however, the Office of Director of National Intelligence published a new report revealing that two unnamed intelligence agencies changed their views and now say it is highly possible that some Havana Syndrome cases came from “foreign adversaries” using directed energy weapons, including radio frequency arms; the report also accused the CIA of using faulty analysis and obstructing the investigation, charges the CIA denies but John Ratcliffe, the nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has promised to aggressively review. Sometimes it seems it would be easier to prove it was aliens.

Retired NASCAR legend Mark Martin, who has the second most wins all-time in the Xfinity Series and has been described by ESPN as "The best driver to never win a championship", now has a new claim to fame after appearing on the Chase Holden podcast where he revealed that he and his private jet’s pilot witnessesed a solid white UFO in the late 90’s at about 19,000 feet over Jacksonville, Florida; he said “It kept getting closer and closer, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, we’re going to hit it’”, so he turned off the autopilot while his pilot tried to take a picture (he didn’t); he said "We both saw this and almost, we thought we were going to hit it. Then it starts pulling away, gradually pulling away, slowly pulling away”; they called air traffic control which said they were alone in their airspace but Martin believes they were in the presence of a UFO. Proof that aliens are NASCAR fans would be the telltale bulge of a tobacco can in their otherwise skintight uniforms.

In what may be the first sighting of 2025, the Loch Ness Exploration Facebook page posted images taken around 4:45 pm on January 5, 2025, by the 24/7 webcam at the Shoreland lodges; the report says “The object was moving close to shore towards cherry Island direction before turning and heading further out into the Loch before disappearing out of site"; commenters estimate the object to be 20 feet in length and argue over whether it is Nessie, a log, a swimmer or something else distorted by the distance and quality of the camera. At 20 feet, it should be showing up on sonars soon, but the real effect will be seen on local cash registers.

Darth Vader would be proud to hear that he is the inspiration for the name of a newly discovered species of giant isopods – the Bathynomus vaderi was found in a Vietnamese fish market and tipped the scale at 2.2 pounds (1 kg), measured 12 inches in length, and looked like the Star Wars villain’s iconic helmet; giant isopods of the genus Bathynomus can grow from 11 to 20 inches long and are called “sea bugs” because they’re related to the tiny pillbugs which curl up and roll around on land; despite being found in a market and known to eat crab, shrimp, fish and squid, giant isopods are not popular for food. Neither was Darth.

Fox Mulder may have wanted to believe in UFOs, but the Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files decided to focus on just one incident - William B. Davis, who played the iconic smoke-covered character on the show, is the narrator of the newly released documentary, “The Rendlesham UFO - The British Roswell” which delves “into the mysterious 1980 Rendlesham UFO incident, often referred to as "Britain's Roswell" with exclusive interviews with prominent UFO researchers, including Philip Kinsella and John Hanson, and “unravels shocking new insights and paranormal activity” while blending “humor, suspense, and eerie discoveries into one unforgettable journey”; the filmmakers did their own investigation and “found higher than background radiation spikes near the landing site and also a weird electronic pulsing sound which was emanating from the woods” and encountered “orbs of light which we could see through the forest but could never reach” that were like “the energy or entity was playing with us". Sorry, no smoking in the theater. (Watch the trailer here.)